The present invention relates to a communication apparatus and method for processing a plurality of communication tasks in parallel by means of a plurality of communication systems incorporated in, for example, a personal computer, and more particularly to a communication apparatus and method which can dynamically and appropriately control allocation of communication tasks to communication systems according to the circumstances.
As information communicating technology has been developed in recent years, various communication systems of different communication modes have been developed in the fields of both radio communications and cable communications. In particular, radio communication systems for use in a personal environment, such as IrDA, Bluetooth, and Home RF, have recently attracted public attention. It will be unavoidably required that the radio communication systems be used each in its proper situation according to the purpose.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publications Nos. 9-149455 and 10-164654 discloses a communication apparatus having a plurality of communication systems, for example, a cable communication system A and radio communication systems B and C. To satisfy the requirement described above, these publications propose a technique in which an application program for generating communication tasks choose an optimal one from the communication systems based on the qualities of the channels of the respective communication systems.
The conventional communication apparatus mentioned above is advantageous in that a communication system of the best quality channel can be chosen. However, the conventional apparatus has the following problem.
When a plurality of communication tasks occur, the conventional communication apparatus chooses one communication system based on the channel quality. All the communication tasks are performed by using only the chosen system in a first-in first-out or time division manner. In other words, the communication tasks are not processed in parallel by the communication systems. Thus, the operation of the apparatus cannot be effective relative to the number of communication systems.